Grandeur, the official expansion to play the Napoleonic age with Impetus at a grand tactical scale is available for free at [url=http://www.dadiepiombo.com/grandeur.html ]http://www.dadiepiombo.com/grandeur.html [/url]

It included army lists for France, Austria, Russia, Prussia and Great Britain.

I believe the artillery rules for Napoleonic games are in error or need some clarification. Light artillery and heavy artillery have approximately the same effective range, it is the damage they cause at ranges that varies. The rules seem to imply, although don't specifically say, that heavier guns have a longer effective range. I can quote my sources for this if challenged, but to do so will take some little time.B.

There were several experiments with Napoleonic artillery, one especially being the 'Madras Records'.I'll take one of my books,- 'Weapons & Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars' by Philip Haythornthwaite, the other books I've got give much the same information. I quote'' the maximum effective range of all[ field pieces can be said to be between 100 and 1,000 yards.' [his italics]. This discusses effective as opposed to theoretical maxima.3pdr- 450 yds- 100% effective3pdr -750 yds- 34%3pdr- 1,100 yds - 20%6pdr- 520 yds -100% effective6pdr- 950 yds-31%6pdr- 1,200 yds- 17%12pdr- 600 yds-100% effective12pdr- 950 yds- 26%12pdr- 1,300 yds- 15%The test results were for firing roundshot at a target representing a line of infantry.Other sources give much the same information.The ranges are not course identical, but they all fall within roughly the same perameters.British 6 pdr canister,400 yds- 41%600 yds- 23%The Madras Artillery manual also gives records for spherical case. I can provide them if you would like to pm me.

Hello all with the possibility of public humiliation I have been looking at the army lists for Grandeur, and have had a go at setting them for the Basic Impetus format. only the French and British so far for The Peninsular Campaign.Also my first attempt at bases. see my blog phenallred.blogspot.co.uk ( putting head bellow the sand bags )

We liked Grandeur in general, because like Impetus. But few moments caused debates and what we changed:

1. Game speed. We playing 15mm so 1U=1cm. And its ok when phalanx going 5-10cm a turn. In medieval we playing mostly cavalry armies, so 10-20cm per turn even better. But napoleonic about big infantry armies and about maneuver. 5cm just don't work for us, so we doubled all movement distances. And played game with 650+ armies about 3hrs, just ok, with good portion of maneuvering.

2. Artillery. Looks like underrated. We had 4 bases ArtB each and they were useful only while defending fire.

3. Skirmish fire. And this is looks overrated. First of all, its more effective then artillery (because high VBU) and as effective as defending fire. Not sure that in realty skirmishers ever could overran whole brigade. We discussed option halving skirmish dices but not tested.

4. Defending fire (opportunity while charged). Most debated moment. Well, ok, defenders have skirmishers, battalion artillery and volleys. But attackers had skirmishers and artillery too! And they in theory have elan. In reality attacking even forces was common. In Grandeur def regular inf have a bonus 7 dices (VBU+pb) beforе every melee. And only 1 dice I bonus for attacker. So attacking is very suicidal now. You can win of course but rely only on 6s. In our game attacker lost about 4of5 attacks. We disscussed a few options. Make I more, or like pilum attacker makes firing too with halve dices. But no agreement now.

longway I don't play Grandeur. All your comments make sense.1. Ok faster is better2. Ok, does it depend on increasing the movements?Artillery should be more effetive against foot in squares and cavalry should bring foot in squares so that artillery can hit. Anyway you can try to increase the dice on the firing table3. Try halving dice. Another way to go is to use fixed dice (not linked to VBU)4. Defensive fire could be halved (round up)

Does a set of Napoleonic rules need defensive fire for anything other than artillery?

Against cavalry infantry just go into square and fire normally in their next turn, at the cavalry who should be milling about around them at point blank range.Against other Infantry, there should really be some sort of firefight before one side or the other charges, and this probably means that the charger will not be far away from the charged at that point. So really the defensive fire will have happened during the two or three previous exchanges of fire.

It might be that people do just try piling into combat in column (which in the Napoleonic period tended to happen by accident because the tactic was to advance in column and fight in line)

In which case it might be worth having a really good defensive fire bonus, but one that is only available to fresh troops who haven't previously fired.So that would encourage attackers to attack properly, with fire support and shooting their own weapons.And of course encourage defenders to cherish the reverse slope

Today we talked again about skirmish and defense fire and there was good point: not halve dices but make more bonus for Cohesion test against firing (not artillery), +2 or even +3. So firing can disorder but not much damage for fresh troops. Will test.